Historical Background

Two states of mental and emotional functioning, new to the
human race, were observed in Germany about 100 years ago.
Nietzsche recognized the emergence of a new human he called
an "Uebermensch," a new, better human with
personality qualities far beyond those of the ordinary
person of that time. As described by Nietzsche, this
higher, advanced person was a self-created person who was
emotionally "harder" than the average person in
part because of having synthesized many contradictory
personality dimensions. In addition, such "free
spirits" were morally stronger and easily resistant to
external social controls because of the development of
their own individual values for living.

At the same time in Germany, Kraepelin observed the
emergence of a new, spontaneously occurring mental disorder
in young people which he called "dementia
praecox." A few years later, Bleuler named the
phenomenon "schizophrenia" (a splitting apart of
the personality) to make the diagnostic term reflect the
primary symptom of the condition.

The picture drawn from the long term study of people who
are life's best survivors is similar to Nietzsche's
description. Such persons are seen as deriving their
flexibility, resiliency, and psychological strengths from
the successful assimilation of many major paradoxes into
their ways of thinking, feeling, and functioning. In
addition, people with survivor personalities are above
average in operating independently from external social
forces, in successfully defending themselves against
negative, judgmental reactions to their way of existing,
and in resisting efforts by others to control or change
them.

The Emergence of a New Psychological Disorder

E. Fuller Torrey writes in Surviving Schizophrenia that
schizophrenia is a relatively new disease. (Torrey, 1985,
p. 208.) He states, "The more one peruses these
ancient sources, moreover, the more striking it becomes
that nobody clearly described the disease we now call
schizophrenia." (p. 209)

Torrey goes on to observe, "Overall it is a strange
history for a disease. Virtually unknown or at least
undescribed for centuries, it suddenly appears all over the
western world simultaneously and is noted to be increasing
rapidly." He asks, "How could it have been missed
if it affected one percent of the population, as it does
now?" (p. 215)

Eugen Bleuler wrote Dementia Praecox or The Group of
Schizophrenias, in 1908 and published it in 1911. From the
beginning, the phenomenon of "schizophrenia" has
been very difficult to name, describe, understand, and
treat. According to Bleuler, Kraepelin used the term
"dementia praecox" to refer to a dementing or
deteriorating condition afflicting young adults, in 1896.
Referring to the condition as a mental deterioration in
young adults was an awkward diagnostic term, however,
because a number of conditions could cause that. It was not
very useful.

Bleuler suggested that the term "schizophrenia"
be used instead. He wrote, "In every case we are
confronted with a more or less clear-cut splitting of the
psychic functions. If the disease is marked the personality
loses its unity; at different times different complexes
seem to represent the personality. Integration of different
complexes and strivings appears insufficient or even
lacking. The psychic complexes do not combine in a
conglomeration of strivings with a unified resultant as
they do in a healthy person; rather, one set of complexes
dominates the personality for a time, while other groups of
ideas or drives are 'split off' and seem either partly or
completely impotent.... Thus the process of association
often works with mere fragments of ideas and concepts. This
results in associations which normal individuals will
regard as incorrect, bizarre, and utterly
unpredictable." (Bleuler, 1911, p. 9)

The Emergence of a New, Exceptional Level of Mental Health

A primary research activity of the author, for many years,
has been to understand and describe people with such
exceptional mental and emotional health that they gain
strength from extreme adversities instead of becoming
psychological casualties. For descriptive purposes an
operational definition "the survivor personality"
was created. Questions about why some people survive better
than others, what consistent personality traits appear in
life's best survivors, and how the survivor personality
develops have been core questions. (Siebert, 1967; Water
and Siebert, 1976; Siebert, 1983; Siebert, 1985a., Siebert,
1994; Siebert, 1996.) Other questions about the survivor
personality include, "How many people have the
survivor personality?" and "How long have there
been people with this sort of personality?"

The pattern of traits usually found in life's best
survivors include:

Behavioral...

A playful curiosity, an inclination to experiment, try things out on their own, a preference to find out for themselves how things work rather than accept other people's perceptions. They ask lots of questions. As adults they show that they have retained from childhood the ability to be playful, toy with things, and learn directly from experience.

Laugh and play with life, with their own minds and feelings, with people and situations. They enjoy being mirthful, foolish, laugh at their own foibles.

They enjoy finding out how things work. They show the natural neurogenic, self-motivation described by White in his classic paper on the concept of competence. (White, 1959)

Motives and personality characteristics...

Their endurance, persistence, resiliency in new and complex situations is primarily derived from having integrated major mental and emotional paradoxes into their ways of functioning. They act with a selfish unselfishness, approach challenges with an optimistic pessimism, have a sensitive toughness, engage in self-confident self-criticism. They have achieved an independent dependency, the list goes on and on. Each person's paradoxical make up is unique, however, because their response patterns are a function of the world they interact with.

A central motive emerging from self-managed learning is best described as a synergy motivation (Siebert, 1976, 1983, 1985a). They are good at making things work well, need to have things working well, expect to be able to make things work well, and are creative in coming up with unique solutions that work. They function well in ambiguous, confused situations because of their inner directed sense of direction. They feel motivated to change situations and conditions from low synergy to high synergy, this having many signs of being a neurologically based need.

Capacity for empathy for people, groups, things. They have pattern empathy, can "read" situations quickly with their eyes and feelings; can draw meaningful impressions from little data; have empathy (not sympathy) for enemies and attackers.

Consciously attuned to subliminal perceptions. They read their own bodies well, notice little physical clues that something is not right or that everything is OK. Will consider as valid hunches, intuitions, ESP experiences.

Defend themselves well. Anticipate danger and take avoidance or preventative action before it can happen. They can be highly resistant to threats, con jobs, pressure, and trickery. They can be deadly opponents if forced into that position.

Key Outcomes

Life gets better and better for them as the decades go by. They get stronger and stronger from the various adversities, strains, and difficulties they encounter. The best survivors have usually been through the worst experiences. They match up with descriptions of people who are the small percentage of individuals who recover from cancer, alcoholism, or major medical conditions. (Siegal, 1986)

Function autonomously within society according to own personal values. They are responsible rebels, cooperative non-conformists. While they can't be controlled or made to be responsible citizens, they voluntarily participate in making things run well.

Exercise a talent for serendipity. They convert misfortune into good luck. Typically refer back to the worst things that ever happened to them as being the best thing that ever happened.

The First Description

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a trained observer. He
called himself a philosopher and a psychologist. He was a
superb observer of the workings of the human mind,
including his own, and the processes promoting or impairing
clear thinking and personal improvement.

At the same time that Kraepelin, Bleuler, and other
European psychiatrists were first observing a puzzling
mental disorder, Nietzsche was observing and describing a
new, better, "higher" Uebermensch. In his
descriptions he describes almost every element of
development and traits of the survivor personality:

Playful curiosity--the final metamorphosis of spirit is to
be a child, a free spirit who dances across truths,
beliefs, and values. A free, independent mind and spirit
"cannot be taught, one must 'know' it from
experience" (Beyond Good and Evil, p. 155) and from questioning
everything.

Laughing--throughout his writings he emphasizes laughing.
Zarathustra says to laugh ten times a day (p. 24); it is
important to laugh at oneself, confirm the validity of
insights and discoveries with laughter, and let wisdom
about all aspects of the human experiences be coupled with
gaiety and joy.

Self-actualization--Nietzsche was compelled to explore and
understand his own nature. He wanted to find out how his
mind worked and the way that thoughts and sentiments
influence human actions. He said, "We ourselves want
to be our own experiments, and our own subjects of
experiment." (Joyful Wisdom, p. 248)

Paradoxical--throughout his writing he makes reference to
the paradoxes, opposites, and antitheses in himself and the
new human. About Zarathustra he said, "all opposites
are in him bound together into a new unity." (Ecce Homo, p. 106) He described himself as lonely and friendly, decadent
and decent, terrible and beneficent, and Janus faced. He
wrote "viewed from his angle, my life is simply
amazing. For the task of transvaluing values, more
abilities were necessary perhaps than could ever be found
combined in one individual; and above all, opposing
abilities which must not be mutually inimical and
destructive." (Ecce Homo, p. 45 - KaufmannF)

Synergistic--he was deeply bothered seeing how much human
energy was wasted through people trying to live by values
and beliefs taught to them. He was distressed by the harm
people do to themselves and others in trying to act
unselfishly. He tried to tell, teach, and show people how
life could be better for everyone if, through a process of
experimenting, developing their own values, and enjoying a
healthy selfishness, they became free spirited
individuals.

Sensitivity--he stated, "I have in this sensitivity
psychological antennae with which I touch and take hold of
every secret: all the concealed dirt at the bottom of many
a nature, perhaps conditioned by bad blood but whitewashed
by education, is known to me on first contact." Being
around people was so difficult for him that he needed many
periods of solitude to recover, and to return to himself
with "the breath of a free light playful air...."
(Ecce Homo, p. 48-49)

Toughness--with enthusiasm Nietzsche describes the new
human as "better and badder," as needing
hardness, as being strong willed. He says, "another
form of sagacity and self-defense consists in reacting as
seldom as possible." (EH p. 63) He observes that all
creators are hard. They have to be because they are, in the
act of creating something new, destroying the old. He says,
"We premature born of a yet undemonstrated future
need...a new health, a stronger, shrewder, tougher, more
daring, more cheerful health than any has been hitherto...a
great health." (Ecce Homo, p. 101)

Serendipity--throughout his writings he talks about the
value of an illness. "The man who lies in bed
sometime...gains wisdom from the leisure forced on him by
his illness." "It was sickness that brought me to
reason." (Ecce Homo, p. 56); "It was in the years of my
lowest vitality that I ceased to be a pessimist." (Ecce Homo, p. 40) He also said that with every hurt or injury he
revitalized himself and became stronger.

There are many more examples in Nietzsche's writing, but
this is sufficient to demonstrate that he covered most of
the elements in the survivor personality pattern. These
qualities, traits, and abilities must be searched for among
the many other things he wrote about, but they are present
to a degree far beyond what appeared in any writing before
his time.

In his writings, Nietzsche demonstrated more
self-understanding than was ever recorded before his time.
According to Ernest Jones, Sigmund Freud's biographer,
Freud said several times of Nietzsche that "he had
more penetrating knowledge of himself than any man who ever
lived or was likely to live." (Jones, 1955)

Nietzsche obviously understood the process of
self-actualization very well. Scattered throughout his
volumes, he showed an awareness of the many abilities and
traits that facilitate self-managed, self-motivated
personal development. He had a good grasp of how to learn
directly from experience while freeing one's thinking from
perceptions and beliefs taught by others. And, of course,
he knew this. He said, "out of my writings there
speaks a psychologist who has not his equal." (Ecce Homo, p. 75)

More importantly, he understood that no one could equal him
by attempting to act in the ways he described. He wanted no
followers, no cult, and no believers. He saw that uniquely
created, individual self-discovery was the only way to have
a free spirit.

A Schizophrenic Connection

How is all this connected to the emergence of schizophrenia
in Germany in the late 1800s? For a partial answer, let us
look to Nietzsche himself...

On July 24, 1876, at 32 years of age, he arrived in the
city of Bayreuth to attend a festival. He experienced
"a profound estrangement from all that surrounded
me...It was as if I had been dreaming...'Where was I?' I
recognized nothing. I hardly recognized Wagner." (His
mentor and close friend.) (Ecce Homo, pp. 90-91) Nietzsche goes on
to describe how he left, went to a forest retreat, sent a
curt telegram to Wagner which ended their relationship, and
withdrew from the world. Isolated from other humans, he
spent months splitting his mind apart and clearing it of
"ten years of a trash of dusty scholarship."

Did Nietzsche develop acute schizophrenia? If we look at
Nietzsche from the perspective of clinician aided by
DSM-III, we find in his self reports:

the sudden onset of a state of mental deterioration triggered by a major depersonalization experience.

withdrawal from contact with other humans, loss of capacity for close contact with others. History of many brief relationships with women. Never married, his strong sexual drives were usually satisfied through brief encounters with street women.

stated that he purposefully worked at not responding to things said or done to him.

claimed that his mind and feelings were controlled by others. Refused to read any books for years at a time claiming the authors were trying to put their thoughts into his head.

deterioration from previous levels of functioning, had to take a long leave of absence from his work because of recurring physical problems, ill health, and migraine.

rejected traditional values calling himself "the Anti-Christ" waging a war on Christianity, "an immoralist," "a decadent," a "Satyr" and "by far the most terrible human being there ever has been...." A sign of his moral deterioration and loss of capacity for judgment is that he had an incestuous relationship with his sister and wrote about it.

expressed incongruous thought patterns. For example, he said most people disgusted him. "This makes traffic with people no small test of my patience.... Disgust at mankind, at the 'rabble,' has always been my greatest danger." (Ecce Homo, pp. 48-49) Then he said, "My formula for greatness in a human being is...not merely to endure that which happens of necessity...but to love it." (Ecce Homo, p. 68) Another example is his bragging about not reading any books for years while he was busy writing books for future generations to read and study.

demonstrated little empathy for the people and groups he was so critical of; showed little empathy for the effect his behavior had on others.

in his writings he produced long lists of unrelated, sometimes bizarre aphorisms, assertions, and metaphors.

experienced a period in which he became possessed by a personality named Zarathustra. For a year he was totally absorbed in listening to the conversations of this imaginary person and writing an account of Zarathustra's life in an imaginary world. He claimed that Zarathustra is "the highest species of all existing things." (Ecce Homo, p. 107)

while writing about Zarathustra he could, by his own account, be seen laughing, dancing and talking to himself as he went for long walks.

showed many signs of grandiosity. Stated "It is my fate to be the first decent human being." And "I am the bringer of good tidings such as there has never been." Predicted that in the future, universities would have professorships or "chairs" endowed for the sole purpose of studying the Zarathustra volume. Upon completion of Human, All Too Human, which he describes as a memorial of a crisis, he said he felt tremendous certainty that he held in his hands a "world-historic" book. In an autobiography he included essays on "Why I am so wise," "Why I am so clever," and "How I write excellent books." He predicted that his existence would create a crisis in the human race like none other before, stating, "I am not a man, I am dynamite." (Ecce Homo p. 126)

His best friend and acquaintances believed that he had a mental breakdown. He interpreted that as information about how far advanced beyond their comprehensions he had become.

What Would Happen to Nietzsche Today?

If you saw only the description above, without knowing the
name of the person, what would you think? If Nietzsche were
alive today in our country, what do you think would be the
reaction to him? Would he be respected as a great teacher
of how to self-manage a deep, healthy metamorphosis? Would
he be diagnosed as "a schizophrenic"?

Did Nietzsche go through a classic peak experience in which
he achieved a higher level of consciousness and then defied
the world to understand? Was he, as he claimed, an example
of great health, of abnormal mental health? Did he
experience a schizophrenic breakdown which was too much for
him to accept, that he tried to deny? What was
"Nietzsche's syndrome"?

There is No Proof That Schizophrenia is An Illness

After all these years, the case has still not been proven
that schizophrenia is a disease or an illness. As
summarized elsewhere (Siebert, 1985b), no one can catch
schizophrenia from someone else, it has a correlation of
occurrence in families and twins close to that of IQ,
athletic ability, music ability, etc., no one dies from it,
there is no known cure for it, people can recover from it
on their own with no treatment, the longer a person is
given drugs or treated in a mental hospital the worse off
they are, the less treatment given the better the recovery,
and some people are made stronger by the experience. No
illness known to medical science acts like this.

But if it isn't a disease or illness then what is it? Is it
possible that in some instances of schizophrenia we are
observing some sort of desirable development? Does
something happen in the human brain during young adulthood
that is a version of what Jaynes has described as a
breakdown in the bicameral mind? Is there an unrecognized
process of neurological integration going on that takes
years to occur?

Is there another developmental stage beyond those already
identified? Is there a cerebral stage that occurs when a
young person tries to take control of his or her brain
functions? Are some versions of schizophrenia a
developmental crisis that is being interfered with rather
than facilitated?

Conclusions

Two mental and emotional states, the survivor personality
and schizophrenia, have followed a parallel course of
development during the 20th century. Now, almost 100 years
later, the incidence of schizophrenia and the survivor
personality is each estimated at being present in 1% to 2%
of the population. The author's assertion is that they are
manifestations of the same basic phenomenon. The classic
"dementia praecox" form of schizophrenia is a
misunderstood, mishandled, disrupted, interfered with,
version of the survivor personality and, conversely, a
person with a survivor personality demonstrates a
successful form of schizophrenia.

Research Questions

The organizing theme of this paper is that the survivor
personality and some forms of schizophrenia are two aspects
of the same phenomenon. Research is needed to explore the
perspective that the survivor personality is a successful
outcome of what is currently perceived during metamorphosis
as schizophrenia and, conversely, that schizophrenia, when
it becomes chronic, a disrupted, aborted, malfunctioning
version of the survivor personality.

If there is validity to this hypothesis, two variables seem
to play a key role in determining the outcome. First, is
the person distressed by the experience? Are they
frightened? Do they ask for help? Do they want
"it" to go away? Or, is the person OK with it and
willing to let it happen? Does the person experience it as
desirable, as opening doors to understanding while family,
friends, and therapists are the ones distressed and feel
compelled to act for the person's own good to try to make
"it" go away?

Second, is the person street smart? An invulnerable? Able
to tell people offering unwanted help to go away? Able to
defend his or her mind and feelings from intrusion,
therapy, and help even during a vulnerable period? Or, is
the person passive and compliant with what others want him
or her to do? Does he cooperate in the recommended
treatment program to the best of his ability even though no
cure takes place?

In the present circumstances, these two variables within
the person appear to determine whether or not the Nietzsche
syndrome produces "a survivor" or "a
schizophrenic."

The problem is that there is a serious lack of information.
Even though over 100,000 books and articles have been
published on schizophrenia, important research areas have
been neglected:

Anyone with experience in psychiatric wards knows that many patients do not agree that they are mentally ill. The question is, if schizophrenia is a disease or illness, then why do so many people diagnosed as schizophrenic have to be talked into believing they are sick? What differences are there between people who agree that they are schizophrenic and those who do not?

Why are people who refuse to believe that they are mentally ill viewed by therapists as the sickest of all?

What is the long term outcome when people diagnosed as schizophrenic disagree that they are sick and successfully avoid treatment? How do escaped mental patients compare with cooperative patients years later? Are the treated patients more healthy and improved when compared to the ones who got away?

Disclaimer: Material found on the Successful Schizophrenia website is for your information only. We are not able dispense specific advice for your situation. If you are under a doctor's care, you should talk with him or her about your mental health goals and if they are not on the same page as you, ask for a referral to a doctor or counselor who is. It may mean interviewing several. If you are on your own, you may wish to contact your local county mental health department to ask for local resources. Our site exists to show people that there are all varieties of mental states and assessments of those states; that sometimes 'mental health' is in the eye of the beholder; and that the mental health profession needs to continue to open itself up to the new paradigm ... progress is being made!